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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26700712">First Priority</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlemercutio/pseuds/gentlemercutio'>gentlemercutio</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Baby Damian Wayne, Child Abuse, Damian has butt awful parents but Jason's gonna fix that, Fluff, Kinda, Sibling Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:41:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,270</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26700712</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlemercutio/pseuds/gentlemercutio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Protect the heir at all costs, Jason.”  His hand falls.  He stares at the heir, white and wriggly and heartbreakingly fragile.  Useless.  Discardable.  “From now on, that child’s safety is your first priority, understand?  Ra’s may say differently, but you must hold true.”</p>
<p>The kid would never survive the League, not the way he is now.  His fury is replaced by some other emotion, similar but not identical.  More tender and less painful, filling his chest with helium and stomach with stones.  Uncertain, he flattens his hand against the porthole again, and some ferocity gives way, and he feels his emotions pouring out of him and towards this child, like a gossamer string tying his soul to its.  He feels very childish, suddenly, filled with want for something he can not have.</p>
<p>Jason nods.  “I accept.”  He stares at the fetus between his spread fingertips.  It twitches in its infinite slumber, fingers spasming open and closed.  “He is my first priority.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jason Todd &amp; Damian Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>137</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>First Priority</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Jason is twelve and rebelling against the Grandmaster for the first time.  Not exactly, he thinks as he passes through the labyrinth of ceramic tiled temple hallways, his footfalls a light as a bird and swift as a fox, just as the League instructed.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>Perfect</span>
  </em>
  <span>, was the word Talia used during his stealth sparring practices, once Jason’s was bone deep exhausted and elbow deep in blood and gore.  He’s perfect at it, at fading into the shadows and staying gone, navigating stone plated hallways soundlessly, seamlessly.  Jason Todd turns to darkness and the Shadows welcome him with open arms.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Talia is in his ear in the small, opaque speaker tucked into his ear.  It’s not typical League design-- the first sign that this isn’t League-approved.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In all honesty, the whole shitshow reeks of mutiny.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The temple, obscured in the high peaks of the Himalayas, belongs to the Grandmaster.  It used to be a Buddhist monastery, he learned, as a basic recon for the mission ahead.  He’d spent the past two weeks studying it: the floor plans, the building itself, the people who lived there.  All League, just dressed as monks like wolves in sheep’s wool, donned in lengthy kasayas, the layers of sunset orange silk cloaking the artillery underneath.  Jason’s uniform is slimmer, more simple.  It’s standard for any out in the field League member: pitch black material, blacker than night and lighter than air.  All of his major organs are covered by a tough layer of kevlar underneath the robes, and he’s fashioned a balaclava out of one of Talia’s artisanal charcoal grey scarves.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d wrapped it over his neck and face, hands deceptively gentle.  He’s stood in her quarters-- another rebellion, for any man outside of their most entrusted servants and the Grandmaster himself are forbidden-- in front of a tall, standing mirror, framed elegantly in entwining silver snakes.  Her fingers, trapped in the binds of Armani silk, skate like hot irons over Jason’s chin and throat.  He swallows, and she pauses her work, her green eyes finding his in the reflection.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re nervous,” she comments, tone meticulously blank and callous.  But she talks, so Jason knows she cares, if only a little.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He shakes his head.  He’s not, he thinks.  He’s the Chosen One (though, in his opinion, probably the worst Chosen One to ever be Chosen).  Chosen Ones aren’t scared.  Chosen Ones are sacred.  Untouchable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She pets the line of his jaw.  Her touch is cold, even through the scarf.  “Banish your emotions,” she reminds him.  The phrase is perfunctory and has changed, adapted with the months.  At the beginning, it had been a short </span>
  <em>
    <span>control your anger</span>
  </em>
  <span>, like anger was simply an electric charge rushing from his head through his heart and out his blade, or bullet, or whatever weapon he’d been training; something to be tamed and redirected.  As the weeks passed, it became </span>
  <em>
    <span>control your emotions</span>
  </em>
  <span>, as the constant vile green fury that stacticked at the edges of his consciousness fizzled away and he was left aimless and confused and, for no reason at all, irreparably miserable.  It hadn’t taken long before Talia noticed that his focus had begun to slip, and she’d twisted the phrase again.  </span>
  <em>
    <span>Banish your emotions</span>
  </em>
  <span>.  Banish.  Definition: get rid off.  Throw away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another League mantra: if it’s no longer useful, discard it.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His nerves soothed some at her words.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Servants would be discarded if they slacked off.  Soldiers would be killed off if they failed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You will not die,” she tells him, her words cold and coarse as ocean-mottled ropes.  It sounds like a threat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He will not die.  Jason Todd was not daunted.  Jason Todd was the Magnum Opus of the League of the Assassins.  Their Phoenix.  He is irreplaceable.  Completely and utterly untouchable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nobody so much as glances at him as he passes, slipping from corridor to corridor, from dark empty space to dark empty space.  Behind his eyelids, he sees the memory of the mapped out floor plans.  There’s a guard standing at the vault’s entrance, bald and cloaked in orange cloth, identical to everyone else Jason’s seen at the monastery.  Jason wonders, briefly, if there’s any Buddhist ritual to be performed at the moment of death, as he drags his dagger noiselessly across the man’s neck.  Like always, the man’s body immediately buckles under his grip, and although Jason can’t see his face, he knows in a fraction of a second his eyes will go wide and glassy.  The man drops to the floor, dead, and even as Jason steps over him and into the vault, he doesn’t have any clue as to why.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The vault’s doors are more complicated as they should be.  The first is a simple keypad, and thanks to Nearly Headless Joe’s thumb, it only takes a few minutes to make it through.  The second is a little more complex-- rigged to the gills with explosives and various gaseous sedatives-- and a lot less room for error.  It’s major overkill by League Standards.  Not even the Lazarus Pit, giver of second life, is this well protected.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A creeping feeling of apprehension sinks into Jason as the mechanisms finally spin from inactivity and the door’s locks recoil away, swarms under his flesh like an army of fire ants, and he almost reaches for the untrackable microphone secured snugly against the inside of his wrist.  If he did get caught, it seconds as an intravenous poison and minor explosive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stops himself before he can contact Talia.  He’d been given strict instructions to use it only in case of emergency, and besides, he has not technically betrayed the League, yet.  His first commander is Talia, before all else, and even if she was going against her father, he was merely a complicit servant to her.  If worse comes to worst, he’d probably suffer some sort of reprimand and be transferred to a different high standing official for safe keeping.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he went outside of Talia's explicit orders, he’d be sentenced much more severely.  And he’d already committed too much treason to plead his own innocence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes a step inside.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The chamber past the second set of doors is stout and dark.  The first hint as to what he’s witnessing comes from the temperature.  Hot-- uncomfortably so, and as he chances a few steps deeper into the cavern, sweat prickles at his neck and forehead, like a sticky second skin.  He tugs at the head scarf, and it tumbles eagerly back into it’s usual spot atop his shoulders, like it’s glad to be back where it belonged.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As his eyes adjust, he spots the ring of space heaters on the floor and ceiling.  They swamp the space in a dim, heavy red light, like moonlight through smoke.  A sight so real, so crystal clear in his memory, it shocks him into a terrifying anger.  He pushes out a long breath, and steels the anger into a bitter cold.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The thing, whatever the fuck it was, is massive.  A metal cylinder, like the Green Giant’s coke can, about one of Jason’s arm’s width across.  Cords or, as Jason takes a longer look, tubes, sprawled out from it’s base like a fucked up spider web, and Jason has the vague impression that the machine is consuming the temple itself, like a huge tick sucked on one massive vein.  On the front of the cylinder was a single pothole, and behind the cylinder, a sheet of tinted glass.  An observation deck, by the looks of it.  But, seeing as he wasn’t currently being gunned down, nobody is home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One step closer.  Jason glances around.  Still, no alarms.  No sign of another presence-- another soul-- except for the quiet shuffling of footsteps on the floor above.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another step.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something fizzles, hisses sharply to his left and he twists reflexively towards the wall, towards the shadows, spine pressed to the heated concrete, heart pounding in his chest.  The fizzling dies, and Talia is in his ear, gloating.  “My sensors tell me you’ve reached the pod.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The pod?</span>
  </em>
  <span> He keeps perfectly still and silent, eyeing the thing with mild distaste.  Talia continues.  “I lied to you, little bird,” she admits, practically purrs, and the long neglected fury claws up his ribcage into a fitful mass in his throat, acidic on his tongue, ready to spew hate and fire.  “This is not a retrieval as I alluded to.  This is, as they say, a learning experience.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fucking great.  That bitch set him up.  Was probably alerting the guards remotely at this very second and planned on him fighting his way out with just his dagger and pistol.  Those motherfuckers had AKs for fuck’s sake.  And he wasn’t in the right mood to go mow down righteous assholes on a Sunday morning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Approach the pod, little bird.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does as he is told.  Up close, the pod is full of some sort of semi-transparent liquid, viscous and churning, an interior heating system lighting it up a similar cherry red as the rest of the room.  There is something inside, pale and writhing and alive.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His jaw slackens with a new emotion, an emotion he hadn’t ever really experienced since he clawed kicking and screaming out of the Pit, something dark and ugly that screamed for him to turn around run until his legs could no longer carry him.  To smash the tank and kill the thing inside, stamp on it with the heel of his foot.  Whatever the thing in front of him was, it was wrong.  It did not belong here, not in the tube, not in this world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Concentrating on keeping his hands steady, he lifts the wrist mic to his lips, and says, “What is that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That, little bird,” Talia’s words are soft like song, a lullaby.  “That is the most valuable being to ever exist.”  Valuable, not powerful.  To the League, the two words were impractically synonymous, but Jason heard the distinction, the careful choice.  This distinction could be deadly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He swallows down the lump in his throat.  “What the fuck is it, Talia?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It is the heir to the Grandmaster’s throne.”  Jason blinks and shifts forward, bracing himself on the cold metal, so that he might get a clearer vision of the living shape.  Snow white translucent skin, webbed with blue-purple veins, and in the largest lump, two bulging globs.  Little eyes, he knows, by some half-forgotten biology lesson.  It has a head, and a brain, and a tiny, beating heart.  It looks so alien, so foreign, and yet it had a head and a brain and a heart.  The liquid inside the tank was flushed with a wispy substance, colorless in the red light, and the being’s hands (</span>
  <em>
    <span>it had hands! With stout little wriggly fingers and ridged fingernails and everything!</span>
  </em>
  <span>) fist and uncurl, tiny webbed fingers outstretched, although reaching for Jason through it’s closed eyelids, through the glass, through it’s world of dark </span>
  <em>
    <span>and wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span> and into Jason’s.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s my son, little bird.  Genetically engineered to be the perfect heir.”  Talia’s words pass over him like a cool breeze.  They barely even register.  He leans closer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something warm and pleasant spreads from the center of Jason’s palm.  He glances down, surprised, to find his hand pressed against the porthole.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who’s the father?” Jason asks, although he doesn’t remember thinking it.  It was more of an old reflex, a gag where his mind settled elsewhere in a moment of mirth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Talia never finds his jokes very funny.  She sighs, voice wary.  “Batman.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jason jerks back, the taste of revulsion already in his mouth, the age old mantra spinning like a carousel in his head.  The first words he’d ever heard, the day he was pulled from the Pit, free of memory and pain but full of so much vile green anger, like a cancerous mass in his chest, building and building.  Grandmaster had looked at him, a godly glower from his podium above, and spoke upon his true mission, his only desire in his second life.  “You’re first priority is thus: Kill the Batman.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kill Batman; first Priority.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I-- I--” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck you, Talia.</span>
  </em>
  <span>  How could you choose this?  How could he just accept this?  “I don’t understand.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We combined our best genetic parts--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.”  He needs to get a fucking grip or he’s going to ripping into things.  The only thing that makes sense is this, “Talia, </span>
  <em>
    <span>first priority</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s your-- First priorities.”  She pauses, thoughtful.  “First priorities change, little bird.  It-- he is now your first priority.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jason’s hands land on his pistol.  It would be easy to splinter the glass and kill the thing inside.  Two shots.  One, if he’s careful</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Protect the heir at all costs, Jason.”  His hand falls.  He stares at the heir, white and wriggly and heartbreakingly fragile.  Useless.  Discardable.  “From now on, that child’s safety is your first priority, understand?  Ra’s may say differently, but you must hold true.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The kid would never survive the League, not the way he is now.  His fury is replaced by some other emotion, similar but not identical.  More tender and less painful, filling his chest with helium and stomach with stones.  Uncertain, he flattens his hand against the porthole again, and some ferocity gives way, and he feels his emotions pouring out of him and towards this child, like a gossamer string tying his soul to its.  He feels very childish, suddenly, filled with want for something he can not have.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jason nods.  “I accept.”  He stares at the fetus between his spread fingertips.  It twitches in its infinite slumber, fingers spasming open and closed.  “He is my first priority.”</span>
</p>
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